10 Things

1. I see the tree sharing space with the sky and clouds in the arched half circle and I wonder,
why can’t we?

Why can’t we share space in the confines in space and in the vastness of –

The sky does not get angry with the clouds for blocking its blue and
the clouds do not get territorial when the bare winter branches intrude upon the view and
the tree does not get frustrated that the leaves have fallen hastily and still green and

How can we learn from them all?

2. The wind is inviting the tree to dance and the tree
is blessed by the invitation, bowing and reaching and stretching beyond – always beyond – what one (one what?) might think the proper confines of a tree are supposed to be

We confine things in such bullshit ways and I say I am done,
let’s strip the clothes off the bodies, the skin too, and let us tumble out together, organs in piles,
blood mixing

Is that what we need to do to understand we are all the same in the way that all trees are the same, they just want to dance in the wind

3. The symbols of practice and tradition hold the weight of death.
My ancestors hid ritual away in a vessel so they could practice without having their breath ripped out of their bodies.
They created games to keep their holy stories alive in secrecy. The breath ripped out
again, and this is why, this is why I will light the candles.
The religion so far from who I am, and yet,
the ancestral blood runs
through these veins. They are,
still who I
am

4. The light has changed –
the gray makes the colors pop and I see the trees, they are not bare but green,
golden at the tips.
And as the sky turns pink, the outline of the tree grows dark, and everything changes, even though it is the same sky, the same tree, the same window that draws my gaze.

5. The ticking clock marks the time I can’t get back and the speed at which life continues on, whether I feel stuck or fluid.
Whether the world has ripped me apart again today, yet
the clock, an outer symbol of my heart, still ticking away, ticking away, ticking away until, one day
it stops.

6. A teacher of mine spoke these words, “Labels obscure our seeing,” and it felt holy holy to me
it felt as if that sentence could heal the world if only, if only we could see,
if we could strip away the labels long enough to notice one another,
to be without needing to complicate that being

7. A brilliant dash of orange just appeared in the sky and I marvel at how quickly
everything
changes

8. The cat meows and tells me that her dinner is more important than the words spilling out of my fingers and I say,
wait, just a moment more,
just another thought,
the faucet running and I need to catch it before it spills and slips away,
let me finish feeding me and then I’ll tend to you

9. My heart sings when I think about how I spent my day,
most of it with a friend who I seem to lose time with
we gather for coffee, or breakfast, and suddenly hours are gone and we’re planning to change the world and
wondering how we hold onto hope when
everything
crumbles
and crumbles some more
we weave between rage and anguish and complete exhaustion and hope and silliness – I think
we hit all of those multiple times today,
don’t I hit all of those multiple times
per breath?

10. A final thought as I look up to see the orange gone. Gone.
How quickly something can be gone. A moment. A breath. A life.
And yet we keep on breathing, we keep on beating our hearts, we keep on finding ways to
be,
to be good to one another, to appear and slip our hand into another’s,
to say without words, I am here,
I will be here
I am not going anywhere, not today.